Recalculating This Post

A couple of years ago I posted a video clip from a Patton Oswalt comedy special in which Patton talked about how time travel has gotten easier in the last few years due to technology. Sure, we don't have time machines yet, but when we finally do get them we won't have to go back 100 years to blow the minds of everyone in the past, we just had to go back to 1995. Because just 17 short years ago we couldn't even fathom something like an iPod. He then went on to explain how amazing iPods would be to our past selves because they are half the size of tapes (not even the walkmans, just the tapes) and yet they can hold just about every song ever written. Also, they are super cheap compared to all the things they can do. But people of today don't even notice anymore. Apple has made so many that they practically give them away and unless it is the touch-screen, 100 GB version people don't even want them. He just couldn't understand why people don't see what a miracle these inventions are. I think he's totally right. I also think iPods aren't the only invention that don't get enough credit for how amazing they are, which is why we're going to talk about another miracle of modern science in this post: the GPS.

If you had told 10 year-old me that in the future you could buy a computer that hooked up to your car, connected you to a satellite in outer space and downloaded a map of every road in the country to make sure you would never get lost again, the past version of me would have logically concluded that this was a feature on a flying car. But the reality is that the current version of me gets annoyed because my new GPS says things like "Take R T 1-2-8" instead of "Take Route 128." (You have to admit, it's a little odd. I mean, the only thing a GPS needs to talk about is roads, so why wouldn't it know how to say 'route'? Also, is putting together a three-number combination so hard?) Plus, I  become frustrated when the GPS leaves out details like how quickly the second turn is coming up, causing me to miss that turn and then tells me it is "recalculating" with the same annoyed tone an ex-girlfriend would use, just missing the heavy sigh. (Oh, I'm sorry GPS, am I keeping you from some important and pressing engagement at the moment? Are you frustrated that our journey is going to take four minutes longer, thus delaying you from being back in the glove compartment? I'm the one who has someplace to be, you know. If you had mentioned how quickly the turn was coming up we wouldn't even be in this position.)

We should also be marveling at how cheap GPS units have become. Like most pieces of technology, they have drastically dropped in price since they hit the market a few years ago. I first bought one as a gift four years ago for several hundred dollars. Now you can get a pretty good one for about a hundred bucks, meaning I can share the pain of any person who ever bought a VCR for $800. And that is if you want one of the bigger units to keep in your car. You can easily get GPS software delivered directly to your phone for much cheaper than that (or free if you feel like trusting a free app). Yep, if you are feeling particularly lazy that day you don't even have to go to the store and buy one, you can just click a button on your phone and the software will installs itself. Not that we appreciate that convenience either. Instead we complain because the list of stores is wrong and the GPS keeps trying to send us to the CVS which moved 4 months ago, even though it is actually our fault because we never bother to log on and update the maps like the machines tells us to every time we log on.

Now, it is human nature to take things which are easily accessible for granted. We always want what we can't have and most of the time the fun is in the hunt. When you can get a GPS unit from just about any kind of store, from electronics to sporting goods, that means they are pretty easy to get your hands on. But when you can buy a super-cheap one from a company you have never heard of out of the "electronics" aisle at the drug store just one aisle over from the toothbrushes, one can easily make the case they are too easy to get. Also, this is admittedly one of those problems that you only have when you are a first-world country. You are never going to find people in a war-torn country complaining about how their easily-purchased GPS sent them the long way around to Starbucks. I just think every now and again we should collectively take a step back and realize that we have some really cool toys at our disposal, even when they don't tell you that the exit is going to be on the left like they are supposed to.